A Recent Case Win–Evading the Police Case Dismissed

In addition to my retained clients, I also take court appointed clients in certain counties, to help citizens that can’t afford a lawyer from waiving their rights if they are facing criminal charges. I think it helps me keep things in perspective and it’s a great way to give back to the community. It can be difficult work at times, but it can be extremely rewarding, such as the case here. This particular client was accused of evading the police. But as always, there is more to the story.

The client had been on probation for another charge out of Gregg County for a period of 8 years. He had two years to go on the probation and had since been living in the Metroplex area. Following his move to the area, he turned his life around from the trouble he had been in when he was young. He was employed and doing well. He was also doing well on probation and staying out of trouble, except that he needed to finish a class as a condition to probation that he had not yet finished.

The day of incident started like any other day with the client going to work. Following work the client had planned to check in with his probation officer, then hit the grocery store before going home. He never made it to the grocery store. When checking in with his probation officer, he was greeted with a “You did not finish the class in time as a condition to your probation. You are going to spend the next 10 years in a box!” Of course the box meant prison! Imagine that–you have served 8 years of probation, got your life back on track, and just like that you have someone taunting you with your freedom. My client was then told that there was a warrant for his arrest and they were going to take him away right there. Of course my client went into a full blown panic and started running for the door. The police caught him and apprehended him in the parking lot.

Instead of just letting Gregg County take my client to decide the issue of the probation revocation, where he was facing 10 years prison time, the Metroplex county decided to charge him with evading for running from the probation officer where he could face up to one year in jail. The evading charge would first have to be prosecuted here in the Metroplex County first before he could go on to Gregg County where his ultimate fate on the 10 years in prison would be decided.

As you can imagine, the client had very limited financial means and was sitting in jail unable to post a bond when I was appointed to represent him. The client had to wait in jail for 30 days until the case was filed–with the Metroplex County footing the bill for this. Once a person gets this kind of jail back time credit, it is very tempting for the person to take any of deal for time served to just get out of jail. The big issue with this approach is it would have been another conviction on his record. I encouraged my client to stand his ground, because I thought we could make something happen if we hung in there on his case.

Once the case was filed, I focused on the issue of whether the client was truly under arrest at the time–you can’t evade if you aren’t really under arrest. Following negotiations with the prosecuting attorney, who really saw the bigger picture, the State dismissed the case against my client.

Sometimes it really pays to stand your ground. Instead of an evading conviction on his record, my client has the case dismissed and has the opportunity to clear the charge from his record. As you can imagine, my client was relieved and very pleased with the result.

Bo Kalabus

Bo began his legal career as a civil litigator and specialized in defending personal injury cases. After several years in civil practice, Bo turned his focus to starting his own law firm and developing a criminal defense practice to complement his experience on the civil docket. On September 4, 2010 the Kalabus Law Firm was proud to announce its affiliation with Rosenthal & Wadas L.L.P.